I'm Not Julia Roberts - Hardcover

Ruby, Laura

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446578746 ISBN 13: 9780446578745

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2007

Synopsis

Does every second wife look like Julia Roberts? Lu Klein certainly doesn't, and her life is anything but glamorous. When she married a man with children, Lu had no idea that she was also marrying his shrewish ex-wife, Beatrix. And Beatrix had no idea that making a new home with her second husband would mean welcoming her wicked teenage stepdaughter, Liv. And Liv's mother Roxie had no idea that so many new and exciting boyfriends could make her long for the stable life she and her ex had too eagerly left behind.

In this tightly interconnected collection of ten short stories, author Laura Ruby chronicles the progress of Lu, Beatrix, Roxie and their various steps and exes as they take the perilous plunge into the maelstrom of the so-called "blended family." Both ruefully funny and wickedly insightful, I'M NOT JULIA ROBERTS offers finely-observed, honest and affecting takes on kids, stepkids, divorce, remarriage...and the movie Stepmom.

About this title

About the Author

LAURA RUBY lives in Chicago, Illinois.

From the Back Cover

"The phenomenally observant and talented Laura Ruby has written a blistering saga of ex-spouses that is sassy, wise and a must-read for anyone considering marriage, divorce, or marrying someone who's divorced, i.e. just about everyone who's ever been in love or hopes to be." --Karen Karbo, author of Generation Ex and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me

"Blisteringly funny and fiercely wise, I'm Not Julia Roberts has got to be one of the smartest novels around on the complicated states of our unions today. Dazzlingly inventive, Ruby blends families, love, guilt and hope into a novel that is downright irresistible." --Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble and Coming Back to Me

"Laura Ruby's first novel I'm Not Julia Roberts is such a hoot it ought to STAR Julia Roberts. A wicked, ironic daisy chain of failed relationships and equally doomed marriages undertaken in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout, it's set in a fictional Illinois suburb where all the men are weak, all the women ride broomsticks and all the children below average ... and still, somehow, there are hearts, if not flowers." --Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Cage of Stars

Reviews

Ruby, whose third YA novel Good Girls is due this fall, starts off with a fresh, sardonic wit in this linked collection of divorce stories, but the unnerving stepchildren, sordid affairs and malevolent exes soon begin to blur. Suburban, self-absorbed Lu ("Lupe Klein, neither Hispanic nor Jewish") never expected to play mother to Ward Harrison's three complicated sons or have to deal with his ex-wife, Beatrix. While Beatrix is in a state of blind marital bliss with her new husband, Alan, she is not ready for Alan's mean-spirited, teenage daughter, Liv. Liv's mother, Roxie, not yet remarried but dating her friend Moira's unscrupulous ex-, Tate, is desperately trying to figure out how to balance her relationship with Tate while maintaining her bond with Liv. There are five couples in all, including Moira and second husband Ben, and Tate's sister Glynn (divorced from Derek) and her second husband, George—plus assorted children. A chapter moving backward in time and composed of e-mails, instant messages and snail mail detailing their entanglements is more disorienting than anything else. (Jan.)
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With the same kind of emotional understatement that made Shari Goldhagen's Family and Other Accidents (2006) so riveting, Ruby tells the interconnected stories of a group of families trying to cope with life in the wake of divorce. Riffing on the idyllic view of blended families presented in the movie Stepmom, starring Julia Roberts, Ruby offers a more rueful, realistic, way-funnier version as bitter ex-wives, angry teenagers, and beleaguered second wives attempt to wade through daily negotiations involving clashing schedules and wounded feelings. Among them is droll career woman Lu, who didn't have a clue when she fell in love with handsome Ward Klein and his three cute toddlers. Years later she must contend with hulking teens who speak in monosyllables and address her as Loopy. Meanwhile, Ward's ex-wife, Beatrix, remarried to a cheerful man whose high energy level matches her own, must also learn to scale back her expectations in the face of his adolescent daughter's contempt. YA novelist Ruby captures both warring emotions and fleeting moments of connection in this smart take on fractured families. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446578746
• ISBN 13: 9780446578745
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272